By the Rivers of Babylon
Yunghi Kim/Contact Press Images Originally published October 2020 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? ~ Psalm 137:1-4, NIV When I first moved to Minnesota one of my first actions was to look for a church to attend. I went to the Yellow Pages to find Methodist churches near where I lived and found two that got my attention. One was an African Methodist Episcopal Church which appealed because I have attended AME churches in the past, have relatives in Chicago and Texas who are members of AME churches, and love the music which sounds like the music in the Methodist churches I attended growing up. The other was a United Methodist Church which appealed because I’ve been a UMC member since I was a teenager in Chi